Trade Secrets, Pt. 9

Let that be a lesson to you, everyone. When you're pouring the test tube solution, you've still got time to reconsider, but there's no going back after the snowman.

Boy oh boy! No sooner am I back from one show than it's time to start thinking about the next -- the Toronto Comics Art Festival, which arrives in only ten days! I haven't been to Toronto since I went to the Paradise con a billion years ago, so it'll be nice to see the big city again. (Not to mention all the insanely talented people who'll be exhibiting there!)

Man, how great was the Calgary Expo? I am so glad Alina convinced me to make the relatively hasty, last minute decision to attend -- because otherwise, I would have missed out on a one of my new favourite shows. Thanks to everyone who came by the booth to say hello and/or partake in our humble cartoon wares. I look forward to seeing you all again next year!

Oh my goodness, the Calgary Comic Expo is only a day away! Attendees can find me at booth #601, which is a part of an entire island of webcomic exhibitors. I am bringing a truly ridiculous quantity of shirts, books and original art, and as always, I'll be doing free sketches and slightly-less-free polished drawings. I'll even have a few of the precious "Bat Fuzzy" limited prints that I saved for the show! So come visit. Good times will be had!

"I'm a long time Sam and Fuzzy fan, and I've always wondered how you go about uploading comics to the site? Do you have a page template that you place each new comic into, then upload that as a new page to the site? Or is there a magical mysterious method that mortals cannot comprehend?" -Louis

Most webcomics folks use some sort of management script that automatically generates their archive and comic pages for them. I use a slightly modified version of a php-based system my friend Ashton coded, called Comikaze. Once you have it set up -- a job that admittedly requires either fair degree of coding knowledge or a willingness to learn -- you can just plug your comics and newsposts into a simple visual interface and let the script take care of the rest.

Another archive script a number of people use ComicPress, a system that rejiggers the Wordpress blogging system into a webcomic archive tool. But there are a lot of different archive scripts out there! And trust me... all of them are good alternatives to the madness that is manually plugging each comic into a page template. I used to do that myself back in year one, and... uuuughhhr. Thank God for Ashton!

"While I was reading the earlier comics, I saw the lyrics to the song I Will Eat Your Family by Noosehead. I then came up with a guitar line for the song. Would it be possible to finish the lyrics to that song please? You only had a few lines before. Stereotypical metal songs are fun to play." -Jacob

You know, back in the day, I actually wrote out a whole two minute song to go with those lyrics myself! I threw together a guitar riff part that Jeph was going to record for me, but he never really had time to learn it and we kind of abandoned the idea.

But believe it or not, those few words -- which you can find in the newspost way back here -- filled the pretty much the entire thing.

Anyhow, I heartily encourage you to craft your own song out of them, but trust me... those are all the lyrics you need. I think you underestimate how much time can be filled with incoherent screaming!

"I was just looking at the "Bat Fuzzy" print again, and it occurred to me: You've got Two-Face as a blankface ninja. But he's half white and half black! So we don't know which one! Is he Mr Blank or Mr Black?! I must know!" -Alon

The answer is simple, my friend! Clearly, in the Bat Fuzzy universe, Two-Face is both Mr. Blank and Mr. Black. It's like Fight Club, only with ninjas. (Which, upon consideration, would have been pretty awesome.)